I don’t know what the problem is. I check their profile to see if the are cute or allurungly attired, then clict “reject”, I don’t owe them any courtesy. But I get very few such requests, because I have only about 25 FB friends.
I get lots of friend requests. But I’m well known to people interested in birds and birding in Panama. I get many requests both from local birders, and guides in other parts of the world, who I’ve never met or heard of. But I don’t accept any from any I don’t recognize, or for that matter anyone who I don’t have a good reason to be friends with. That also goes for friends of friends who I don’t know personally. I don’t want posts from someone I don’t know (or barely know) cluttering up my page, nor do I want to share my posts with such people,
I have 480 friends, and many of them I can’t recall who they are. I have 131 outstanding friend requests that I haven’t accepted.
My wife is the “facebooker” as I couldn’t possibly be interested in someone’s plate of bologna sandwiches. She has gotten “friend” requests like the OP states, from someone she doesn’t know. Shortly, she gets a prompt to “re-enter password” and the next thing you know, her real friends are getting bombarded with spam. She’s gotten that problem solved but now she simply deletes any “stranger” friend requests.
I have received friend requests from people who I don’t know, who have either few or no friends, and few photos. These I delete.
I receive friend requests from people whose name I recognize and is already friends with other friends. These I accept, even though I don’t really know them. The neighbor of my parents is in this category.
And then there are people I know in real life who send me friend requests. I accept these, even if I haven’t seen the person in 30 years.
I don’t use Facebook, mainly because of the copyright policy, but I use LinkedIn, primarily for professional contacts. I get requests to link from time to time, and I simply look at the professional background of the would-be link. Anyone without a reasonablly full or convincing profile is rejected at once, then I check the profile. Did they contact me through an existing contact? Does their profile show that they have the same professional background and are worth including? I can recall about a dozen that were obvious fakes or scammers.
Skype seems to be less popular these days, but in the past I got occasional would-be callers who I blocked immediately.
If I were to use Facebook, I would restrict friend requests to people I knew. I would also give out next to no personal information. Given that Facebook is so ubiquitous, I may have to break down and use it eventually.
Like Darren_Garrison, I’m on Facebook mainly for the myriad hobby groups concerning my interests. I, too, get friend requests from people I don’t recognize, but it’s easy to check if they are part of the hobby communities I’m involved with. If they are, I accept the request. Many times, this has lead to online friendships with similar-minded, cool people across the world. If this new person exhibits nutso behavior, trumpism etc., I’ll swiftly delete them from my friends list.
Other social media apps give you control over what a potential friend sees, so you can add someone, but keep them at arm’s length initially. They don’t see your pics, don’t see your friends.
I don’t use Facebook much, but my recollection is that it’s a pretty blunt tool when it comes to this kind of privacy setting.
It’s really a problem that doesn’t need to exist.
Back in the day when Facebook was “farmland for hours” I accepted and was accepted by lots of people. The more games I played the more “friends” I made. I almost made it beyond 5,000 friends when FB decided to do that as a hard cap. Over the years I stopped playing those games or my “friends” stopped playing. I started weeding down my friend list by checking their walls on their birthdays.
Some of the friends I made back then are still my friends today. Some of them were even my “enemies” who, when the games closed down, had liked my trash talking (in game fun) sent me a FR.
Nowadays I tend to get mycology folk FRing me. I accept their request and then check their wall. This allows me to see what their wall looks like as a friend vs if they have their wall locked down in any way. If it shows “buy my funky shrooms” or “DM for a good time” I just unfriend them immediately.
My profile is set public but if it were locked down in any way… leaving a FR sitting instead of deleting it allows that person to still be able to read your wall. I also Block the one sister who keeps setting up new profiles and FRing me.
I have two facebook accts, one for personal, one for business.
My personal one was set up by a friend of mine, so that he could keep in contact with me when he quit the job we were working together. I pretty much only use it to play games, and for that, I sent and received tons of friend requests for people who play the same games. I don’t think that I’ve actually checked that account in a couple of years now… Used to have a need for time wasting facebook games, now I don’t have as much time to waste. I’ve never really shared anything on that account, and have visited my “homepage”/“timeline” thing maybe 3 or 4 times.
My business account, I accept most friend requests, as they may be people wanting to become clients. All I share on that account is pictures of dogs.
If we have no friends in common, it’s an autodelete. If we have some friends in common, I’ll investigate their page to see if maybe we do know each other in some way. Some of my best Facebook friends are friends-of-friends where we’ve had enough interaction on the mutual friend’s page to be able to assess whether we want to “friend” each other. And some are just scammers.
But I haven’t accepted an actual friend request in years as most of the requests have been crap. I also get random Messenger messages from strangers, either for phishing or trying to pick a fight because of something I wrote somewhere. They all get deleted too.
My youngest sister has lots of friends - she’s decidedly gregarious and mostly they’re people who she’s met IRL. I once got a request from someone on her list, so I figured why not. Well, his 2-day-old FB account was the first hint something was off. Then, without naming her, I asked how he knew my sister (our last names are different) and he couldn’t give a believable answer. So I contacted her - she was messing with him because she was bored. I just deleted him.
Some years back, I got a request from someone who had a lot of other Dopers as mutual friends, so I took a chance. It took about 3 days before “she” tried to rope me into some kind of “apply for this grant” scam. Delete, and I warned the mutual friends.
FWIW, my FB profile has minimal info and my page is Friends Only. And I’m now very suspicious of friend requests. Even when I verify that it’s someone I wouldn’t mind staying connected to, I use Unfollow liberally. It saves me from a lot of “look what I’m eating” posts or those who just share posts others have made without offering original thoughts.
If someone posts a picture of their lunch more than a couple of times, I’ll block them.
The partners of two of my nephews overshare. One is a goth who is constantly posting horror memes. The other is constantly posting stuff about her self image (she once made 20 posts in a row.) Since they both post photos of my nephews’ kids, which I like to see, I don’t block them but snooze them for 30 days at a time. They currently seem to have slowed down a lot so I haven’t had to snooze them recently.
I always check the profile. 90% of the time, it’s obviously a bot, posing as a sexy lady with pictures stolen from Instagram, and a friends list filled entirely with thirsty looking third world men. Those always get deleted.
However, if I have mutual friends with this person, and they aren’t obviously bots, I’ll accept tentatively and decide later if they are going to be a problem. Occasionally, someone who has no mutual friends with me requests my friendship, and if they’re in a group I’m in I might accept. Outside of bots, there’s not a big risk involved in accepting a friend request. You can always unfriend or even block them later if they turn out to be a problem.
Oh, I’ve noticed several Mormon missionaries requesting my friendship lately, and I always ignore those. Sorry, 19 year old from who knows where, I don’t want to talk with you at length about Jesus. You don’t want to talk with me about Jesus, either, I can guarantee it.
I look at their page and see if they are legitimate or not. Very common to see a very pretty girl and then her friend list is loaded with Nigerians. If I like their posting history I accept the request.
There is no way on FB to send a message to me saying “Did I know you in Aspen in 1995?”, and nothing in either profile that could tip off an old acquaintance. That shortcoming cuts both ways. Yahoo Profiles worked well for that, and I found a number of lost friends that way…
I don’t friend anyone who is not actually a friend. If I don’t know them IRL then they are just another rando on the internet. Not even friends of friends–I don’t know how or if my friend knows them.
Some people collect FB “friends” like picking up bottlecaps or something. I don’t see the value of having a thousand friends that you don’t know. Meeting new people in real life is different. You can have have close friends or just acquaintances. But you don’t give your cell phone number out on the subway.
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If I don’t know them and we don’t share any friends? Delete
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If I don’t know them but we share many mutual friends (I’m involved in local history), I’ll add them, but limit which of my posts they can see by using the “audience” options.
Aggregating my “friends” into categories allows me to post what I want, but still control who reads it.
The problem with the mutual friends thing is that every bot I’ve ever noticed will have mutual friends–that’s how they found my account in the first place. And that’s why I don’t like to accept–I don’t want to open up my friends to then get these requests. A lot of them are not as savvy about this sort of thing. And while account may have no information that I care about leaking, my friends’ accounts often do.
If it’s someone who actually has a posting history and seems to be a real person, I’ll usually message them and ask if we know each other or why they are adding me. I’ll ask specific questions to make sure they’re not some bot that took over a legitimate account.
I did once add a Ukranian lady, not long before the Crimea thing happened, and it was nice to get some information on that. Unfortunately, when COVID-19 started causing lockdowns she was convinced it was a Putin-led conspiracy to attack her freedom. After she directly asked me if I believed it was real, and I told her about knowing people it had actually affected, she wound up deleting me.
I did have another possible “pen pal” type attempt, but unfortunately she couldn’t understand my questions, no matter how simply I wrote them, so I determined she was either a bot (who had taken over a likely legitimate account) or just didn’t understand English enough for it to work out.
I also have people I do sorta recognize but whose walls I checked and saw they weren’t people I would want to be Facebook friends with. And then just some people I’ve been reluctant to add who I genuinely do know.
Oh, and I found a way to get fewer bot requests: don’t have your gender be public. While it may be coincidence, I get almost no requests from the whole “sexy bot” types. Though I also note my first name, while typically masculine, is fairly uncommon. If you have a common male name, it might not work. It hasn’t seemed to help my dad not get them.
Reductio absurdum, or whatever the phrase was. Most folks on this thread act like it’s 1990, when in reality people make online friends all the time, and there is absolutely no need to meet face to face to become friends with someone. It’s no different from how you make friends in meatspace.
You participate in stuff you find interesting, and meet new people interested in the same stuff. You start talking, share experiences and opinions on said stuff, then proceed to get to know each other further. You find out you have more in common than you knew, you share funny and thoughtful stuff and you start feeling like friends, because you are.
A couple of years ago someone on FB friend requested me. I didn’t know who that person was, but I could tell he was into the same esoteric hobby I had been doing for decades. I also learned at a glance that he had the same profession as I do. He lived across the world, but hey, a seemingly cool guy. Friended.
Knowing what I had accomplished, this new guy started asking me technical questions. They were intelligent, focused questions, so no problem giving him the info he needed. He would report his progress, I would offer further insight etc.
Fast forward six months, and this not-so-new guy asks me on FB if I have any special books on my wish list. I give him some titles, and learn that he has some of those very publications, that I’ve searched long and hard, to no avail. Now this guy wants to send me the books, as a gift for all the help he got. I’m thrilled, and receive a prized package a month later.
Fast forward to this day, and this well-known guy and I have been friends for a long time, sharing and caring as friends do. I know that if I ever travel across the world to his town, I have a place to stay, and vice versa. I’m glad that I know this guy, who Facebook provided, and who I have never seen IRL. Business as usual.
I get the plastic babes with exotic names friend requesting me like everyone else. Easy to spot. With the real people, I’ve never had a scammy or questionable situation. At the very worst, some new “friend” reveals himself as a right wing zealot, and the snip is made, end of story.
I don’t think that’s it. It’s more that Facebook isn’t a place designed for that. It’s designed to be an online place for you to meet with real life friends. It uses real names, something you don’t use online until you know the person well enough. Same with other personal information.
And Facebook itself actively discourages using it to meet new people. Like I said, you can get locked out if you try to send friend requests to too many people. What I left out is that it’s much stricter if you’re not a friend of a friend, which is why scammers always go after the friends of the person they scam. More than a couple of those, and Facebook locks you out.
And I say this as someone who has met people on Facebook, as I said. But it doesn’t surprise me one bit that people don’t normally do this. I am not aware of any of my other friends who use it to make new friends. And even I have only done it as an exception.
I’m much more open to making friends elsewhere than on Facebook, where my identity is not immediately known. The only way I can think I would ever add someone is if we’d already met on one of those pages and hit it off, but the way those are made seem to discourage that sort of thing.
Anyways, to most people, it seems Facebook just isn’t where you meet people online. At least, not unless it’s through mutual friends.